


Seeds

by thaliaarche



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Hades!Ciel Phantomhive, Inspired by Hades and Persephone (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore), M/M, Persephone!Sebastian Michaelis, Wordcount: 100
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 06:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19997098
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thaliaarche/pseuds/thaliaarche
Summary: In hell, it is always spring.





	Seeds

**Author's Note:**

> "From a bowed tree had she plucked the deep red fruit,  
> And from the pale rind pressed seven seeds consumed  
> by her mouth."
> 
> \- Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ on Persephone in the underworld

Hell’s bouquet overflows. Its asphodel fields engender every vice, lustful blooms springing forth, greedy in heat, tangling tight until they choke each other off. The demon revels in this violence. It plays, driving its slaves down purposeless paths, lying bare-skinned in the bounty of lilies. A vain flitting creature, it decks its own brow with garland crowns and plucks every wanton flower to drain its nectar dry. It gorges itself, roaming rampant– unbridled, untouched, wanting for nothing. It drapes itself in every shade of wickedness. It rules these endless valleys, where sin blossoms evergreen.

In hell, it is always spring.

* * *

The grass splits, baring a chasm black as the abyss, and the demon falls deep. It tumbles across a river into another realm, passing streams of fire and tears. 

The journey shreds its form and leaves it in wispy black tatters. The demon pulls them close, suddenly alone and exposed in a land not its own. The rules of this place tighten like reins around its dusky mane and marble neck. They bind it. A boy with death in his eyes demands that it surrender its excesses, ripping away its dignity and its liberty too. It lets itself be stolen.

* * *

From ashes the demon rebuilds a manor– a palace. Stone columns stand silent in underlit halls. Outside clouds drift listless in dreary gray skies. The flat heath stretches on for miles, wholly colorless in England’s winter and devoid of life.

This would be a lonely palace if not for the phantoms in every corner, the whispers of death still smoking from every scorched brick.

This palace forms the center of a vast hollow underworld. From here come orders, orders and righteous threats and blackmail. From here terror unrolls its tendrils. With one word from here, one might just fall dead.

* * *

A boy dares to claim this domain. From his grand seat, he barks out fatal commands, his fingers curling white around a skull-tipped cane brandished like a scepter. He is a guard dog, with enough plots to fill three heads. He is king.

He trains his demon carefully, accustoming it to his laws and whims. He carves away its carelessness– naive, nearly innocent at times– and molds it into a colder weapon. He bends it to his iron will just as he twists the whole damned underworld, and though he is merely a boy, in his eye glints something ancient.

* * *

Charred by an eternity of suffering, his soul is only iron and ash.

Yet as he grows, a ruddy glow restores the apples of his cheeks. Pale flesh turns luscious, a pome’s succulent cushion wrapped around his core of bone, and his lips bloom soft and pink. The demon savors those lips with the care of a connoisseur. Some days it plucks quick kisses, as if popping seeds from a fruit; on others it licks them thoroughly to relearn every facet of their flavour. 

At its boldest, it lets its fangs penetrate the rind to the juice below, spilling red.

* * *

The demon finds itself trapped.

It never loses its infernal glory, its yearning for home. Yet it grows without realizing it, expanding to encompass its new dual role until it belongs _here_ in equal measure. And though it pretends a mere contract explains the change, the true blame lies in its hunger. The longer it lingers in this dreary otherworld, the more clearly it perceives that it’s starving– perhaps it always has been. 

Goaded by pure _want_ , it feeds over and over on forbidden fruit and pays with slivers of itself. Soon half its soul’s sold to its little lord.

* * *

Once the king saw fit to grind his fiend underfoot. Once its subservient role served only to demean it. But as the chessboard grows more treacherous, pawns become useless. He requires a queen.

Thus the demon ascends to the throne.

It rests in the shadows at its king’s right hand and thence executes his commands. At his will it doles out poison and pain and doom, drifting further down the black chasm with each lethal act.

(One day soon it must leave this seat for garlands, for bright green springtime.)

(Even in that freedom will it keep the underworld’s crown.)


End file.
